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Craft Bre C ewer Stan ndardizes s on Micr rosoft T Technolo ogies to Reap R Inte egration Benefits
Ove erview
Cou untry or Region: United States Industry: Manufac cturingConsum mer ducts prod stomer Profile Cus New w Belgium Brewin ng is a premier craft c brew wery located in Fort F Collins, Colo orado. The companys 280 employees prod duce gian-style ales fo or distribution ac cross Belg the United U States. siness Situat tion Bus New w Belgium wante ed to gain better insight into its business info ormation, simpli ify its IT m better use of o its environment, and make hnology investme ents. tech Solution h the help of 3t Systems, S New Be elgium With migr rated from a Nov vell-based netwo ork and e-ma ail system to an infrastructure based b on Microsoft M technologies. nefits Ben En nhanced integra ation and in nteroperability Si implified IT adm ministration, mini imized su upport More M time for stra ategic work Be etter business in nsight
With a Microsoft-b M based inf frastructure, we sh hould s spend les ss time try ying to make thing gs work to ogether a more and e time tak king advantage of our IT i investme nts.
J Richardson, Director Jay D of Information Technology y, New Belgium Brewing
New Belgium N m Brewing, a Colorado o-based craf ft brewery with w origins i the Belgia in an style of ale a making, , has grown steadily fro om a h home-based d operation to a thriving company with distrib butors a across the western w United States. The compa any was usin ng a N Novell-base d networkin ng and e-ma ail system, which w it found i increasingly y challengin ng to integra ate with its business b an nd IT a applications s from other vendors. As A a result, the t compan ny decided t standardize on Micro to osoft techn nologies, mi igrating to Active A D Directory , Microsoft M Ex xchange Server 2007, and a the 200 07 M Microsoft Of ffice system m. With this new IT infra astructure, New B Belgium ant ticipates a significant s r reduction in n time spent t a administeri ng its IT env vironment and a a greatly improved ability to c capitalize on its wealth h of business informatio on to drive its i o operations f forward.
It required an increasing amount of energy to achieve basic integration between our business applications and our Novell environment. And there were some features we just couldnt take advantage of at all.
Jay Richardson, Director of Information Technology, New Belgium Brewing Company
Situation
Inspired by Belgian brewers during a European bike trip, Jeff Lebesch returned to the United States, set up a homebrew operation in the basement of his Colorado home, and started producing Belgian-style ales. In 1991, this basement operation became New Belgium Brewing, perhaps best known for its popular Fat Tire Amber Ale. Over the past 16 years, the homebrew operation has grown to become the third largest craft brewer in the United States. For the past 10 years, the company used a Novell-based directory, file, print, and e-mail system, primarily to share files and documents among employees and to communicate through e-mail. For some time, this infrastructure sufficiently served the brewerys needs. New Belgiums Director of Information Technology, Jay Richardson, says, Early on, the company primarily needed a way to share files and communicate electronically. Most of the files it produced were created in Microsoft Office 2000 and Microsoft Office 2003 desktop software. But in 2003, leaders at New Belgium decided that the company needed to make better use of its wealth of business information. New Belgium uses Microsoft Dynamics GP business software to manage financial information and a Microsoft SQL Server 2005 database to store and analyze this information. We had been using Microsoft Dynamics GP primarily for finance and accounting purposes, says Richardson. But with the data being housed in a SQL Server database, we knew there was much more we could do to improve our insight into the business. To achieve better business insight, the company identified and, in 2004, embarked on an IT road map covering three key projects: Tapping into the enterprise resource planning (ERP) capabilities of Microsoft Dynamics GP 9.0 Implementing a third-party sales analysis and forecasting application Implementing a third-party manufacturing execution system (MES)